028 Radical Homemaker Shannon Hayes

...l Homemakers Gender roles Her new book Homespun Mom Comes Unraveled Messes Making relationships work Perfectionism Home schooling Higher education Student debt Occupy Wall Street Reclaiming the holiday season Shannon’s sock knitting machine If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to rootsimple@gmail.com. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The theme m...

Read…

Have you ever wanted a uniform?

...which suits all of my needs (fit, comfort, pockets, good fabric etc.) and making it my very own. I also like to think that having a uniform would eventually save in laundry and reduce material waste over time. It would harken back to the days when people simply didn’t have more than a handful of outfits to wear, but those outfits fit them well and lasted a long time because they were made of quality materials. Lately I’ve been obsessing over the...

Read…

Flowers from Vegetables

...the birds will move in. Of course this means that I’m “wasting space” and making my garden “unproductive” but the rewards outweigh any inconvenience. New gardeners are often surprised to see what amazing flowers different vegetables make. People with no connection to food plants whatsoever may not even know that vegetables make flowers, so it’s fun to show them a carrot flower, a squash blossom, a bean flower. My new favorite garden flower comes...

Read…

Get Baking and Share the Loaves

...oll, answering questions and sharing his knowledge. Baker’s love for bread making is infectious. Catch that infection and you’ll go down a very deep and geeky vortex of hydration ratios and cold proofing sessions. At a panel discussion on Monday, moderated by KCRW’s Evan Kleiman, Baker announced that he’s working on an Einkorn baguette, the bread geek equivalent of proposing a new route up K2 sans oxygen. At both events he dropped a lot of advice...

Read…

Virtuosic Bread Shaping

...al many different Markook shaping techniques. Here’s a pillow free version making the rounds on Facebook: Post by Akhilesh Sharma. Back to learning a difficult skill. In the case of shaping dough it’s often best to practice with a sacrificial lump of flour and water that you’re not going to eat. It takes the pressure off and you’re free to try and try again. This applies, of course, to many other skills. Once you get the basic motion down, than it...

Read…